July 29, 2026

Good morning! Today is Wednesday, July 29th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. With the Iran War entering its 151st day, Netanyahu lands in Washington pressing Trump to expand strikes as gas prices climb and Houthi attacks rattle Saudi oil infrastructure. The once-solid Israel-Turkey partnership is fracturing into open rivalry, and analysts warn Washington should resist being pulled into another regional confrontation shaped by Israeli anxieties. Looking toward 2028, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Rand Paul each embody a rival vision—fusionism, populism, and libertarianism—that could complicate a Vance or Rubio coronation. and now for the details. We begin with the ongoing Iran War, now in its one hundred and fifty-first day. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Washington on Tuesday for his eighth meeting with President Trump this term, even as the recent pause in direct hostilities between the United States and Iran holds. President Trump used a Fox News interview to threaten strikes on Iran's Pickaxe Mountain facility if no deal is reached, telling the network, quote, "Bibi is telling me" about Pickaxe "because he wants me to stay involved." As Harrison Berger reports for The American Conservative, the Financial Times, citing a source briefed on the trip, says Netanyahu came to Washington to push for expanded operations against Iran, wanting the fight to be, quote, "about more than just Hormuz." The Prime Minister is also expected to raise objections to a possible U.S. sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey. Meanwhile, satellite imagery confirms damage to gas storage tanks at Saudi Arabia's Abqaiq facility, the world's largest crude processing plant, after a Houthi strike. Commercial traffic through the Bab el-Mandeb strait has slowed. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on television that Israel wants to strike Iran's energy targets, but the United States has not approved such strikes over concerns of a global oil crisis. Brent crude sat at eighty-seven dollars a barrel Tuesday morning. AAA put the national average price of regular gas at four dollars and ten cents. Staying with the region, the growing rupture between Israel and Turkey is drawing new scrutiny. Prime Minister Netanyahu has called Turkey's regional aspirations aggressive, and other Israeli officials have floated Turkey's removal from NATO. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has gone so far as to declare that, quote, "Turkey is the new Iran." As Mason Letteau Stallings writes for The American Conservative, this represents a striking reversal. Turkey was the first major Muslim-majority country to recognize Israel, and the two nations spent decades as strategic partners, cooperating on defense, trade, disaster relief, and in the Caucasus through their shared support for Azerbaijan. Stallings argues that the current shift follows a pattern Israel earlier ran against Iran. He cites analyst Trita Parsi, author of Treacherous Alliance, who notes that Israel's rivalry with Iran hardened in the 1990s not because of Iranian ideology, which was then moderating, but because the Soviet Union and Ba'athist Iraq had faded as common threats. With no buffers left, Iran's power itself became the problem. Parsi told the magazine that the same logic now applies to Turkey. As Iranian influence in the Levant has shriveled with the fall of Assad and the weakening of Hezbollah, and as Azerbaijan has decisively beaten Armenia, the glue holding Israel and Turkey together has dissolved. Stallings' conclusion for American policymakers is direct: Washington should not allow Israeli fears about a rising Turkey to shape U.S. decisions, and if tensions escalate further, the United States should stay well clear. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.